Show I 1 GROW ING olda OLD V R there thle ismach 0 of f truth hand hana ana and re real A un knowledge of human life in the following from Fra erasers sers magazine printed in edinburgh scotland age is only to be deprecated when the opportunities tuni tunit lea ties a long life has haa afforded ifford ed for doing good have passed away and in the language of another vla via vice appears to arva prevail U after the passions have haye subsided sub sut sided 4 but to the aged whose benevolent acts have shone forth all along lifes pathway w we irresistibly award the reverence due it is is very easy in one sense to grow prow old you hanebut have but to sit still and do nothing in and time passing over you will in make lake you ON old oid but to grow old wisely and genially is one of the most difficult tasks to which a human being can ever set himself it is very hard to mako make e up your mind mina to it some men grow old struggling and recal cit rating dragged along against their will clinging to each birthday as the drowning man catches at an overhanging 11 bough some folk grow old gracefully and fittingly I 1 think that as a general rule the people who least reluctantly grow old are worthy men and women who see their children growing in g up into all that is good and admirable with ith equal steps to those by which they feel t themselves he ives to be growing downward A better nobler and happier self they thick will take the their thein r place lace and in all the successes honor an and d happiness tap happiness of that new self seir they can feel a purer and worthier pride than they ever felt in their own but the human being who has hag no one to represent him when be he is gone will naturally wish to put off the time of his going as long iong 1 as may be it seems to be a difficult thing to hit the medium between clinging foolishly to youth an affect affecter eI parade of age entire naturalness upon this subject appears to bo be very hard of attainment you know how many people men as well ivell as women pretend to be younger than they really I 1 are I 1 bave have found vario varlo various us motives lead to t this i predence pretence pre tenee tence enee ence I 1 have known men distinguished at a tolerably early age ase in some avill of intellectual exertion who in announcing their age which they frequently did without t any necessity were wont to deduct three or five years from the actual tale plainly with the intention of making their talent and nd skill more remarkable by adding the element wernent of 0 these being developed at a wonderfully earl eari early stage of life they tiley wished to be recognized recognized aa as infant phenomena to be an eloquent preacher is always an excellent thing but bat how much more wonderful if the preacher be no more than twenty two or twenty three to repeat the battle of is a worthy the foolish parent pats his childs head with special 11 ecial exultation as he tells you that his 1 child ild iid who has just repeated that popular poem is no mork more more than two years old it is not improbable that the childs real age C is two years and eleven months it is is very likely that the preachers chers real age is twenty eight I 1 renumber hearing L of a certain clerical person who presuming on ayery avery youthful aspect gave himself out as twenty four when in fact lie lle was thirty I 1 happened accidentally to see the register of that individuals bals baptism which took place five live years before tle tie t lic li ilc c period at which he said he be was born the thie fact of this documents existence was made known to the lna tnt man by way of correcting his singular mistake je ile he saw it but he clung to the fond dl delusion and a year or two tivo afterwards I 1 read with much amusement in a newspaper some account of a speech made by him into which account was incorporated an assurance that the speech was me the more much as the th youthful orator was wa nomore than twenty four very very contemptible you say and I 1 en agree with you and arid apart from the dishonesty I 1 do not think that chat judicious people ciu value very highly the crude grude fruit which has be been enforced forced to a certain ripeness before its time let letfus Ps ha havethe hav vethA ethes mature thing give us in tel beef rather than intellectual yea veal yeal in the domain of poetry great things have occasionally been done at a very early age for boudo not insist upon sound and judicious vie views ws of life ilfe in poetry for plain sense and practical guidance ui dance you go elsewhere but in ein every ry other department of literature the value pf af a production is in direct proportion toabe to the amount of rhe the experience which it embodies i A man can speak with authority only of tat that which be he has h myself felt and known A in man in cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces and all feeling and most mooda of in lid ild iid avill be very poorly described by one who takes his notion of them at second hand when whon you are very young yourself you may read with sympathy the writings of very young men but when you have reached maturity matu rity a and d learned by experience the details and realities of life you will be conscious of a certain indefinable want in n such writings and I 1 do not know that this defect can be described laore more definitely than by saying that the entire thing is veal not beef you have the immature animal you have the Gli berries erries harsh and crude but long after the period at which it is possible to assume tle position of the infant phenomena you still find many men anxious to represent themselves as a good food deal younger than they are to the population of britain generally ten terl years elapse before one census is followed by the next but some persons in these ten years grow no more than two or three years older B I 1 let isec me conf confess ess to 10 an anex irema ireme abhorrence of such men affects menith esthar an indescribable disgust I 1 cislik 0 it more mar than that many things which in themselves are probably more evil morally such men are in the essential meaning of the word they are shams im postures false pretences pretenses they are an embodied falsehood their iery very person allty is a lie and you dont donat know what about them may next prove to be a deception looking at a man who says he is forty three when in fact he is above sixty I 1 bus suspect act him hlin all over I 1 am in doubt whether Us bbs tail dale hair his teeth his eyes are real I 1 do not know whether that breadth of chest be the development of manly bone and muscle or the skillful padding of the tailor I 1 am not sure how ho V much is the idian irian and how much the work of bib bis valet I 1 suspect that his whiskers and moustache are dyed I 1 look at his bis tight boots and think how they must be tormenting his poor old corny feet I 1 admire his affected buoyancy of manner and thinh think how the miserable creature must collapse when he finds himself alone and arid is lyo iio no longer compelled by the presence of compan company t to put himself on the stretch and carry on t that thal at wretched acting 0 0 t and when I 1 have heard long ago such a one with a hideous gloating relish telling a profane or indecent story or instilling ling cynical and impious notions of life and things into the minds of young lads or more disgusting st still ill iii using phrases of double meaning in the presence of ir innocent young women and enjoying their it innocent inocent ignorance of his bis sense I 1 have thought that I 1 was beholding as degraded a ace phase hase base of human nature as you will and nod on the race nace of this world oh venerable age gray wise kindly sympathetic before ivich which I 1 shall never cease reverently to bend respecting even what I 1 may wrongly per perhaps hays esteem your pre prejudices U that you should be caricatured and degraded e in that foul old leer leet leering ng satyr and if there be a thing on earth that disgusts one adne more than even the thought of the animal himself it is to think of ministers of reli religion gion giop prudently pious who will wait meekly I 1 ia n his hl ls antechamber ante adte chamber and ana sit humbly at his tahe table tabla because c he is an earl or a duke but though all aji this be so there is a sense in which I 1 interpret the clinging to youth in which there is nothing contemptible about it but much that is touching and plea piea pleasing shio shig I 1 abominate the padded rouged gouged 1 dyed old shad sham sham shad but I 1 heartily respect the man or woman pensive live and sad as blittle little circumstance has impressed upon them the fact that they are growing old A man or woman is a fool who is indignant at bein being ten aen called the old lady or the old gentleman when these phrases state the truth blit but there is nothing foolish or unworthy when some such occurrence brings it home to us with something of a shock that we are po no iong long longer ner ger reck reek reckoned among th the e youn young and that the innocent and impressionable days of childhood so well remembered are be beginning 0 to be far away we are drawing nearer we know to certain solemn realities of which we speak much and feel little the undiscovered country humbly sought through the pilgrimage of life is looming in the distance before us we feel that life is not riot longani lon ion long iong gand and is not commonplace when it is regarded as the portal to eternity and probably nothing vill will bring back the season of infancy and early youth upon any thoughtful mans mind so vividly as the binse sense that he isgro ia crowing wingold old oid how short a time then you look at at your great brown hand it seems beems like yOt yesterday erday since a h boy hoy companion rray gray fray now tried to print your name upon the little embar ae paw air and there was not room you remember it is it five firc and twenty years since bince as it looked when laid on the head of a friendly dog two oc or three days before you found I 1 him pol poi poisoned and find died and helped not without tears to bury him in the garden under hn an appletree apple appie tree you see as plainly as if yon you saw it nophis brown eye eje asit arit looked at you in life for the last time and as you feel these thase things you quite unaffectedly and sincerely put off time after time the period at you will accept it as a fact that you are old twenty eight thirty thirty five forty eight mark years on reaching which you will still feel yourself young many men honestly think think that BE sixty I 1 ety arty five or sixty eight is the prime of ilfe life A less leas amiable ac accompaniment compani ment of this pleasing belief is often found in a di 11 to call younger young per ger maen taen arld and arid not very young boys I 1 have heard that word uttered in A a very vei vet y spiteful p tone as though 0 it were a pame ri ade ase of threat g a t cepro reproach ach aeh 1 there are few epithets which I 1 have eva eya ev heard hard applied ona on a manner betokening greaty greater bitterness than that of a clever cleter lad iad ad you r rev ret member how sir robert walpole hurled t charge of youth against pitt you remell how pitt cor or dr johnson for him defend himself with great force of argument aga the imputation pos PCs possibly sibly in some cases en enjo is at the root of oi the matter not ever every ma mail has the magnanimity of sir bulwer lytton att 0 oh who tells us so frankly and so often how mma mu he would like to be young soung again if it be he coot colitti co |